


Seeing, Not Believing

by bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies



Series: Sheith Monster Month 2019 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Based On Buzzfeed Unsolved, Ghost Hunters, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, M/M, Monster Fuckers Sheith Month 2019, Past Character Death, Title Subject to Change, in that Shiro is a ghost, this is mostly Gen but has a bit of flirting, this is the least scary ghost AU because I am Babey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 07:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21231866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies/pseuds/bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies
Summary: Keith didn't believe in ghosts.  Not at all.  He was just along to play the skeptic to Pidge's believer, and stop his friend from having a heart attack at every little bump in the night.  Keith's mind was open to the idea of ghosts, but he had never seen any substantial proof.  No spooky mystery sounds, nor voices on the EVP, nor the weird-yet-strangely-hot, dressed-all-in-white, kind-of-glowing squatter in the basement of the old house could convince him ghosts were real.





	Seeing, Not Believing

**Author's Note:**

> This is absolutely the LEAST scary ghost story ever because I am Babey and can’t even watch Buzzfeed Unsolved by myself once the sun sets. Enjoy!

“We’re here at the Williamson haunted house -- home to several entities not of this world and possibly even a demon -- to answer the question ‘are ghosts real?’” Pidge paused in her regular intro to give Keith the chance to do his customary little head-shake, a favorite of the fans. She sighed, as if she didn’t see it every time they did this. “Your head’s gonna be shaking for a whole other reason by the time we’re done here,” she told him.

Keith blinked, taken aback. “Are you suggesting a ghost is gonna get into my head and rattle around in my brain?”

“Maybe,” Pidge turned back to the camera. “You never know.”

“I invite them to try,” Keith chuckled, leaning back in his chair. “Then we’d have proof.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Pidge cautioned. “So wait, are you saying that if you actually see evidence of a ghost, you’ll finally believe in the paranormal?”

“My mind is open to the idea, given substantial proof,” Keith shrugged. 

“We literally have several episodes _ full _of proof!” Pidge gestured broadly toward the camera. 

“Nah, a few creaks on the EVP and some floating dust bits do not count as ‘substantial proof’ that ghosts exist,” Keith snorted quietly. 

“Well, then, you’re gonna like what we have tonight,” Pidge patted the pocket of her jacket with a smirk. “I brought along a new little toy…”

“A stuffed bear for you to snuggle with when you get freaked out from sleeping in this old house?” Keith shot back with a smirk of his own. 

“Shut up.” Pidge turned back to the cameras. “Let’s get into the history of this house and why it may be inhabited by the beings that it is…” 

~~~~~

The investigation went much the same as every other investigation. Pidge provided her research into the history of the building and the land it stood on, including the multitude of deaths (“but people die in places all the time; someone probably died in that motel we stayed in last night! Why isn’t _ that _ place haunted?” “Well, maybe it is.”), they walked around several rooms in the darkened house, flashlight beams sweeping over dusty furniture and peeling wallpaper (“I’ve said this before, but this house is still maintained; we could just turn on the lights…” “But then we wouldn’t see the ghosts.” “We haven’t seen any ghosts ever”), Pidge touted her plastic water bottle full of holy water she had had blessed by a priest (“Pidge, you’re _ Jewish _” “I like to cover all my bases”), and held a few EVP sessions in some of the more reportedly-haunted rooms (“did you hear that?” “One of us probably shifted our weight. It’s an old house, it creaks”). 

Pidge’s “new toy” turned out to be something called a spirit box, which Pidge alleged let spirits communicate with them through the use of rapidly-scanning radio frequencies. Keith listened attentively to her explanation of how it worked, but was still unprepared for the ear-splitting noise the little device let out. 

“Holy _ shit _that is loud…” Keith muttered, clutching his ears. Even Pidge was making a face at the noise, but she pressed on.

“Are there any spirits here with us tonight?” Pidge asked, then paused for several seconds. The spirit box quickly shuffled through dozens of radio stations in a capocany of static and fractions of sounds sometimes interspersed with a few notes of music. 

“My name is Pidge…” she looked at him expectantly. 

Keith looked back at her. “Yeah, I know.” They had been friends for almost five years. 

“No, now you introduce yourself.” She gave him an exasperated look.

“Oh, right.” Keith had forgotten, because he didn’t believe there was anything here to introduce himself to. “My name is Keith.”

“Our names are Pidge and Keith. Can you say either of our names back to us?” Pidge looked at the spirit box.

“..._ -idge… -nd… k… -th… _” 

Pidge’s head snapped up and she stared at Keith, wide-eyed. He blinked, nonplussed. “What?”

“It said our names,” she hissed.

“I heard ‘bridge’,” Keith admitted. “Followed by _ kkkkkkkkkxxxx _,” he made a sound like static.

“It definitely said our names.” Pidge looked around. “Can you say our names for us one more time?” She asked the darkness.

“_ ...wh-y… _” The sound was interrupted by a burst of classical music.

Keith covered his mouth to hide his laugh. “That’s definitely not our names.”

“It sounded like ‘why?’” Pidge insisted.

“Also not our names.” 

“But it’s a response.” Pidge addressed the darkness again. “Who are you? Why are you in this house?” 

Silence. Or, as silent as it could be when there was a machine ripping through dozens of radio stations at lightning speed.

“Do you want to hurt us?” Pidge asked.

In the midst of the flurry of static, a few fragments of words peppered through, but nothing concrete. 

“Gonna need more than one word to work on, mister ghost,” Keith said. “Or miss ghost. Or non-binary ghost, gotta be inclusive--”

“Shhh, let them speak!” Pidge shushed him, and Keith snorted.

“_ ...-be… get out… -ow… _” 

Pidge’s mouth fell open and she jumped, nearly dropping the spirit box. Keith looked unfazed. 

“You heard that, right?” She asked him.

“The static? How can I not? It’s deafening.” 

“It said ‘get out now’, clear as day,” Pidge hissed. 

“Clearly not, because I didn’t hear it,” Keith pointed out. “I guess I heard ‘geh-ou’ but that’s not a word.”

“Do you want us to leave?” Pidge asked the spirit box. 

More static.

“Maybe it’s tired,” Pidge posited. 

“_ I’m _tired. Can we turn that thing off?” Keith pointed at the screaming device. 

She sighed and turned it off. The silence was heavy after all the noise. 

“I tell you, there may not be a demon in this house, but that thing definitely has the ‘unholy shrieking’ down.” Keith pointed at the box. 

“Shut up, it’s a valid piece of ghost-hunting technology.” Pidge shoved it back in her pocket.

“Which in itself is a very valid pastime,” Keith snorted.

“It is!” Pidge pointed the beam of her flashlight at his chest. “You’re doing it right now! You’re a ghost hunter!”

“No I’m not…” Keith paused blinking. Walking around a dark house, addressing the empty air, night-vision camera strapped to his chest… “wait… am I a ghost hunter? I don’t want to be a ghost hunter! Ghosts aren’t real!” He laughed at the idea. 

“Too late, buddy, you’re a ghost hunter,” Pidge told him as she headed for the basement. 

“Do I have to put that on my resume from now on?” Keith trailed after her, still chuckling. 

For the last part of their investigation, they each spent five minutes alone in the basement, as Pidge maintained that the ghost might be shy around the two of them plus their cameramen. Keith went first, and when Pidge offered him the spirit box, he shook his head. “No thanks, I’ve had enough of a headache for one night.” 

He wandered around the dark, decrepit basement for a bit, aimlessly talking to himself for the benefit of the camera strapped to his chest as he let his flashlight beam trace over the broken furniture and wooden frames that remained of the walls. 

“I guess I’ll sit here quietly in the dark for a while,” Keith took a seat on the bottom step of the wooden staircase. “Ghosts, feel free to do whatever you want to me. Tousle my hair or poke my nose or whatever.” He turned off his flashlight, leaving the small, high-set window as the only source of light in the dark basement. Keith looked around, but couldn’t see much without the flashlight’s beam. “This is much better than the spirit box,” he mused. “I think that’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.”

He sat in silence for a minute, listening to the quiet creaks and groans as the old house settled and the other members of their crew shifted their weight in the kitchen above him. 

“You know, if you stare into the darkness long enough,” Keith voiced his thoughts aloud for the benefit of the camera. “Then eventually, you start to see shapes moving around. That’s just your brain’s way of dealing with the absence of anything else to see. Doesn’t mean there’s anything there.” He was seeing that right now; if he didn’t know any better, he would have thought there was a shadowy head and torso peering at him from behind the skeletal wooden remains of a wall. A weird trick of the light, coupled with quirks of the brain and eyes. 

“That’s five!” Pidge called from upstairs. 

“Alright. So long, ghosties.” Keith got to his feet. He clicked the flashlight, but the batteries seemed to have died. That was strange. He put his hand out to touch the wall as he carefully made his way back up the stairs, thankful that his light hadn’t bit the dust when he was on the other side of the basement where he would have to risk tripping over the boxes and buckets of construction materials littering the unfinished basement.

Strangely, Keith’s light flickered on by itself when he reached the top of the stairs. Huh. He hadn’t touched the button, but he reasoned that his earlier clicking the button must have left it switched on, and the batteries finally pulled themselves together for one last minute. He would have to change them soon, he thought as he opened the basement door and joined the others in the kitchen. 

Even in the dim light, Pidge looked a little pale and rattled (and she hadn’t even had her turn yet!) “Did you see anything?”

“Oh yeah, bunch of ghosts and skeletons dancing around a giant pumpkin wearing a witch hat.” Keith yawned. “No, there’s nothing down there.” 

Pidge frowned at him and took a deep breath to steel herself before descending into the basement. Keith checked his watch and leaned against the edge of the kitchen counter. According to Pidge’s research, some gruesome murder had happened here in the 80s, where the husband had been driven crazy by the ghosts and demons in the house and ended up mudering his wife and keeping parts of the body in the stove. The current owner of the house -- who ran ghost tours because she was unable to sell the place -- claimed that the stove was the same one as back then. 

Keith was about to make some quip about the stove when a burst of static erupted from the basement; Pidge was apparently using the spirit box again during her solo time. 

“You know that meme of the loudest sounds?” Keith said, half to their cameraman Hunk and half to the audience. “With the airplane, and the bomb, and all that? The spirit box belongs in that.”

Hunk rolled his eyes with a smile, but said nothing.

Keith kept track of the time, made a few more witty quips for the camera, then called down into the basement when the five minutes were up. 

“Oh thank _ god _…” Pidge whispered under her breath, quickly climbing the stairs again. 

“You look a little rattled,” Keith commented lightly, masking his true concern for his friend. She looked terrified, and was all pale and wild-eyed. “You see something?”

“No, but I heard a lot.” Pidge lifted the spirit box, now turned off and silent. 

“What did it say?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to have to analyze the files when we get back.” 

Keith laughed. “If you have to dig deep and overanalyze it, then you didn’t really hear anything.” 

“I did! I’m just not sure _ what _I heard,” Pidge bristled. “But I know there’s something down there.” 

“And now we get to sleep here,” Keith reminded her.

Pidge groaned. “Oh _ fuck me _…” 

Considering the last place they had spent the night at had been the hard concrete floor of a cold, drafty, haunted hospital, it felt almost like glamping to spread their sleeping bags out on the floor of the house’s living room. Hunk set up the cameras to keep an eye on them, then bid them goodnight and went back to the motel nearby where they had stayed the previous night. Keith was just glad this place still had electricity, he mused as he plugged his phone charger in; the battery had drained unusually fast today. He might have to replace the battery soon. 

Several minutes after they had settled down, Pidge spoke up quietly. “Keith?”

“Mm.”

“Are you asleep?” 

“Yes.” 

“No you’re not.” Pidge rolled onto her back with a sigh. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep tonight.”

“Me neither if you keep talking,” Keith grunted.

“There’s definitely something living in that basement,” Pidge whispered.

“I thought ghosts weren’t technically ‘living’?”

Pidge grumbled angrily and inarticulately while Keith smirked into his pillow.

A few minutes later, Keith had nearly drifted off when he felt something tap his arm. It might have freaked him out a little if he hadn’t distinctly heard the nylon rustle of Pidge snaking her arm out of the sleeping bag a few feet away from him. “Keith, I’m not sure I can do this.” Her voice was low, too quiet for the camera positioned on them to pick up.

“You want to call it quits?” Keith asked, just as quiet. “We can go back to the motel.” 

“I don’t know,” Pidge admitted. “I mean, I already gave up when we investigated that demon-infested house in Kansas. I don’t want people to give me crap for it again.” 

“Screw the viewers; do what you need to do,” Keith told her. “If you want to leave, then we’ll leave.” 

Pidge was silent for a few minutes. “Can I just sleep with you? In your bag?” 

“That’s gonna cause a lot more comments than leaving,” Keith snorted. Like anyone else who had even a moderate amount of popularity on the internet, he was pretty sure they had fans of the show ‘shipping’ them together despite their clearly-platonic relationship (that, and Pidge was dating their cameraman Hunk, but that didn’t stop the fans). 

“You’re right, it’s stupid.” A rustle came from his right and Keith looked over to see her pulling the sleeping bag over her head, disappearing into it. He could make out the lumpy shape of her legs curled up tight to her chest under the fabric of the bag. 

Keith pushed himself up with a groan. If there was one thing he hated more than people insisting ghosts were real, it was Pidge in actual, genuine fear. It was why he joked around on set so much, because as soon as that glassy-eyed look of fear came over his best friend’s eyes, he couldn’t stand it; he _ had _to make her feel better. Or at the very least, turn her fear into exasperation towards his over-the-top jibes at whatever ghosts and demons were rumored to be there.

“Alright, fine, you win,” Keith sighed dramatically, loud enough for the camera to pick up. Pidge lifted the edge of her sleeping bag to regard him quizzically as he got to his feet and walked over to the camera pointed at them. “Pidge says we should be keeping the camera on the basement door, since that’s where the ghosts live,” he told the camera. 

“I did not!” Pidge bristled. 

Keith ignored her and moved the camera, shifting it so that the focus was on the closed basement door. He checked the grainy, green-tinged night-view on the viewfinder and made sure that only the bottom corner of their sleeping bags was visible on camera. “You guys are here for the ghosts and ghouls, you don’t need to watch us sleep for…” he checked his watch and sighed; it was two in the morning. “...three hours.” They didn’t get a lot of sleep on these investigations (if any, given Pidge’s nervous habit of talking to herself and keeping Keith up).

Keith checked over the camera again to make sure everything was working properly. “It’s fine if the audience just sees our feet. Or my feet, I guess. You’re too short for the camera to pick up any part of you.” It wasn’t just one of his usual digs at her height that was a staple joke on their show. 

Pidge, smart cookie that she was, seemed to catch on. Keith stepped back from the repositioned camera and jerked his head towards his sleeping bag. Pidge slipped out of her own and into his, and Keith slid in next to her. It was a tight fit to zip them both in, but Pidge was small and Keith was lanky, so they managed to make it work. She was burrowed down in the bag with her face right at his collarbone. 

“Don’t want to open my eyes and see something creepy looking at me,” she explained in a whisper. 

“Gotcha.” Keith looped an arm around her because there wasn’t really anywhere else to put his arms. “Any ghosties sneak up behind you, I’ll punch ‘em in the face.” 

Pidge snickered and closed her eyes. “Thanks, Keith.” 

~~~~~

It felt like Keith had only just closed his eyes when Pidge was shaking him awake. 

“Mm?” He grunted out a question as he cracked open an eye to check the time. 3:03 AM. Barely an hour of sleep. 

“Keith,” Pidge whispered so quietly that he could barely hear her, even as close as they were. “There’s something in the basement.” 

“Mm.” Same grunt, more resignation. She did this at every place they went. 

“I’m serious. I heard something,” Pidge said. “Something… creaking.”

“It’s a wooden house, Pidge,” Keith sighed. “Built in eighteen-whatever. It’s old. It makes noises.” 

“I swear I heard footsteps,” Pidge hissed. “Shuffling footsteps. Like someone walking.” 

As if on cue, a low _ thunk _echoed from the basement. Even Keith had to admit that didn’t sound like the house-settling noises they had been hearing all night. It sounded like something falling off a shelf. 

“Alright, what do you want to do?” Keith asked. “Want to check it out?” 

“I want to run the fuck out of this house and never come back.”

“But you might miss some proof or evidence or whatever,” Keith pointed out.

“Frankly, I’ve got enough evidence for one night. I do not want to see whatever is down there.” Pidge shivered, and Keith rubbed a hand up and down her back. “Why don’t you go check it out? If it’s nothing, you can gloat all you want. But if there’s something down there, maybe you’ll finally believe.” 

“You’re just trying to get me to go look instead of you.” Keith sighed and reached for the zipper of the sleeping bag. He had to admit, though, the chance to gloat about it being nothing was too good to pass up. “Fine, I’ll go look.” 

Keith pulled on his boots (that basement was fucking cold and had dirt floors, he wasn’t about to go down there in his socks) while Pidge pulled the sleeping bag over her head and peered out like a turtle, wide eyes fixed on the basement door. Stifling a yawn, Keith reached for the mag light next to his backpack and clicked it.

It didn’t turn on.

“Fricking…” he whacked the light with his palm, but it still didn’t turn on. 

“It won’t turn on?” Pidge sounded worried. 

“Batteries must be dead. Same thing happened earlier, but I forgot to change them out.” Keith grabbed the equipment bag and rooted around in it using his sense of touch and the faint light of the moon coming through the living room window. While looking for batteries, he came across the thermal camera. Better than nothing, he supposed. Then at least he could capture whatever it was (or wasn’t) on camera. He turned it on and found the battery low, but usable (weird, considering it had been charging for three hours). “I’ll go see what it is. Ten bucks says it’s a raccoon that got in.” 

“Be careful,” Pidge whispered, her voice small. 

Keith tapped two fingers to his head in a mock salute. “I’ll be fine. I’m good at not tripping in the dark.” He knew that wasn’t what she meant, but he wasn’t about to start believing in ghosts because of one little mysterious bump in the night. 

The basement door creaked as he opened it. Everything was dark and silent in the basement. He started down the stairs, and the door let out a whine as it eased shut behind him. Keith could see a thin sliver of light at the bottom of the door, narrow at one end and just a bit wider at the other. So the house had settled at an angle, he thought. That was why the door fell shut, when not propped open with something. He was sure Pidge would have freaked out if it were her here, but Keith wasn’t bothered by a little gravity and physics. 

Keith kept an eye on the thermal camera as he descended the stairs. He could see the outline of the steps, and the vague shapes of things stacked around the basement. Turning in a circle, he couldn’t see anything out of place down here--

Keith’s heart jumped in his chest as a person-shaped heat signature appeared on the screen. He looked up, squinting into the darkness, but that corner of the basement was pitch black. 

“Hey,” he called out, keeping his voice low. “Is there someone down here?” 

His eyes picked up no movement, but the heat signature on the thermal cam shifted, like it was startled. That… that was definitely a face. 

Keith frowned and peered into the darkness. “You can’t be down here. This place is privately-owned; we had to get permission to be here. You’re gonna have to leave.” 

He heard a shuffle in the dark corner, and the heat signature darted away behind the staircase. 

“Fucking…” Keith went around the other way to cut the person off. Probably just a squatter, but he wasn’t about to let them get near Pidge. He placed himself beside the bottom of the staircase to prevent whoever it was from making a quick escape. “Hey, come on, I’m not gonna hurt you or anything. Can we just talk?” 

Silence. At least this side of the basement had a high-set window letting in enough moonlight to see by. Looking into the back of the basement, Keith could see the stacks of boxes, the busted-up wall frames, and plastic sheeting hanging over the unfinished walls. He could see that heat signature hiding behind one of those plastic sheeting tarps. It moved from side to side, like someone shifting their weight, then a human face peered out from around the edge of the tarp. It was a man -- young-looking, despite the head of white hair -- who was so pale that his skin and hair seemed to almost glow in the moonlight streaming in through the windows. He was beautiful. But he was still not supposed to be here. 

“What are you doing here?” Keith asked him. “This place isn’t actually abandoned anymore, you know. Some lady runs tours out of it.” 

The man blinked, looking shocked. He didn’t say anything. 

Keith huffed out a sigh. “Sorry, but you’re gonna have to leave. If you go now, we won’t tell the cops, but I don’t think the owner of the house will be as nice if she finds you here.” 

“I can’t leave,” the man said. His voice was soft, with a weird sort of reverberation to it. Or maybe Keith was just sleep-deprived. The man inched out from behind the tarp, and Keith saw that his clothes were white and just as pale as the rest of him. Weird look; Keith would have mixed in some color, personally. 

“Well, you can’t stay,” Keith told him. “Sorry.” He looked around, curious. “How did you even get in here, anyway? That window is pretty small.”

The man glanced at the window, then back at Keith Every one of his movements was slow, like he was moving through water. “I was always here.” 

“So, what, you were hiding when we were down here before?” Keith asked. “Guess you heard all the yelling, sorry about that. Just hamming it up for the cameras.” 

The man gave him a clueless look. “Yeah, I was here.”

“You could have said something.” Keith pointed out. 

“I did.” 

Obviously not, or they would have heard him lurking about. Dude probably didn’t want to get in trouble for squatting on private property.

“Are you the caretaker or something?” Keith asked. The owner had mentioned someone named Coran might be around the grounds, but this was way too late for any sane person to be out working. “What’s your name?” 

“Shiro,” the man said. 

Keith arched an eyebrow, giving him a flat look. He knew enough from watching anime to be familiar with a handful of Japanese words, colors, names, and battle-worthy insults. “You’re really into the all-white aesthetic thing, huh? Clothes, hair, and name?” 

The man, Shiro, looked down at himself. “I didn’t choose this,” he said, looking up at Keith again.

“No?” Keith didn’t really know what Shiro meant by that, but he was a little distracted by the way the moonlight was making his hair almost glow… not a hint of roots, even though it had to be dyed. “I mean, it kinda does work for you. Really anything would, though.”

Shiro tilted his head slightly, a small smile gracing his lips. “You’re not so bad yourself, Keith.” 

“Pajama pants and a band t-shirt, fresh off the runway,” Keith remarked dryly, then paused and blinked. “Wait, how do you know my name?”

“You told me. Earlier.” Shiro said. 

“Oh, you heard us when we were, uh…” Keith laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of his head. The investigation, right. “Look, I promise I’m not a lame ghost hunter or whatever. I know it looks like that, but really I’m just along to be the skeptic to my friend’s believer; it’s her show, I’m just kinda there. I promise I’m more cool in real life. I definitely don’t believe the whole ghost schtick.” 

Shiro tipped his head, smile turning confused. How could he be so buff yet so adorable?

Keith cleared his throat, hoping to move past any awkwardness. “Hey, so, this is kinda forward, but… would you maybe want to get a beer sometime? Meet somewhere that’s not a dingy old basement?”

Shiro’s smile turned sad and he shook his head. “I would. But I’m sorry, I can’t leave this place.”

Keith let out a terse breath through his nose. So they were back to this again. He needed more than two hours of sleep to deal with this shit. “Well, like I said, you’re gonna have to leave. You don’t have permission to be here.” 

Shiro looked confused. “This is my home. I can’t leave. My spirit is bound to this place.” 

“Look, I get it, childhood home and all that,” Keith said. “I know how it is; it kinda feels like I’m leaving a piece of my heart in the desert whenever I have to leave my dad’s old place. But unfortunately this place is privately owned, and the owner explicitly told us that no one lives here anymore. So like I said, you can go now without any trouble, or you can wait for the owner to get the police involved.” 

Shiro looked at him a minute longer, expression unreadable. Then, suddenly, he was gone. Keith didn’t see him move away, or even see him fade or disappear, he simply… wasn’t there anymore.

“What the…?” Keith lifted the thermal camera and walked around the basement. “Hey, Shiro, dude, where did you go?” He searched the whole basement, but found nothing. “For _ fuck’s sake _…” Keith sighed, heading back up the stairs. It wouldn’t surprise him if he had imagined the entire conversation as a fever dream brought on by sheer fatigue. He knew he shouldn’t have gone out for drinks with Matt and Hunk the night before filming an investigation.

Keith closed the basement door behind him again, locked and deadbolted it in case that guy was still hiding down there (when they asked why there was a deadbolt on the basement door, the owner had simply replied “ghosts”), and went back to the living room. Pidge was sitting up with the sleeping bag wrapped around her, only her wide, terrified eyes visible. 

“You were down there a long time,” she said. “And you were talking to something.” 

“There’s nothing down there.” Keith set the camera down on top of their gear box and crawled back into the sleeping bag. “I thought there was a dude squatting down there, but it turned out to be a fatigue-induced hallucination. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to catch up on some Zs.” 

“_ What?! _ ” Pidge squeaked. “You _ saw someone _down there??” 

“Thought I did, but then I looked again and there was nothing,” Keith grumbled. He was already heading off to snooze-town when Pidge suddenly clambered out of the sleeping bag and crawled over him in a panic, rudely waking him up again. 

“I cannot _ believe you _…” she hissed, grabbing the camera and turning it on. Keith let out a noncommittal grunt and ignored her; if she wanted to stay up all night replaying a feed of him talking to air, that was her problem, not his.

Tinny audio filtered out of the camera as Pidge watched the screen, rapt. Keith had nearly fell asleep again when Pidge clapped her hands over her mouth and let out a muffled shriek. “_ Keith! _ ” She hissed, shaking him awake again. “Are you _ serious _?! This is a Class A Full Bodied Apparition! In this basement! And you saw it! How can you be asleep now?!”

“I’m _ not _, thanks to you!” Keith groaned and rolled over onto his back to look at her. Pidge was sitting beside the sleeping bag, hunched over with the camera Keith had taken to the basement in her lap, one hand pressed to her mouth as she watched it with wide eyes. Keith was surprised to see that the man from his hallucination was actually on the screen. Huh. But that would mean…

“You. Saw. A ghost.” Pidge was practically shaking, but he honestly didn’t know if it was fear or excitement. “You saw a ghost. This is _ huge _ , Keith, absolutely huge. I can’t believe _ you _ saw a ghost, and you’re not making a big deal out of this.” She was quiet for a minute, watching the video, then let out another shriek. “ _ You asked the ghost out for a beer?! After flirting with him?! _” 

“He was hot! And I thought he was real!” Keith rubbed his palms over his eyes in frustration. 

“He _ is real! _You talked to him!” Pidge said. 

“He couldn’t have been real, he just straight-up disappeared!” Keith countered. 

“Because he’s a ghost!” 

“Ghosts aren’t real!” 

“You just _ saw _one and you’re still saying that?!” 

“She’s right.” That voice, right in Keith’s ear, was accompanied by a sudden, sharp drop in temperature, making the living room feel as cold as the basement had. 

Keith’s eyes flew open and Pidge sucked in a sharp breath. Both of them looked around, but there was no sign of the silver haired man. 

“Shiro?” Keith tried calling. 

“I’m here.” There was that voice again, right in his ear. Pidge must have heard it too, based on her wild-eyed response. Keith turned around, but there was no one there, despite the words spoken so close they were right beside his ear. “I’ll always be here. You don’t have to worry about anything else harming you here.” 

Keith was so busy having his world view turned on its head that he barely noticed Pidge suck in a shaky breath. “Wh...what else is here, then?” 

Silence. 

Keith and Pidge stared at each other for a minute, wide-eyed and speechless. Pidge clutched her bottle of holy water to her chest and fetched the camera set up in the corner, plugging in her headphones to see if the audio recorder had picked up the voice. Keith pulled his sweatshirt tighter around himself and swallowed around a suddenly-dry throat. He tried to open his mind and feel for any sort of negative energy, but having not believed in such things until literally three seconds ago, he didn’t really know what he was looking for. He didn’t sense anything malevolent, but normally he would say that was because there was nothing to sense. Now, he wasn’t so sure about that.

Neither slept a wink for the remainder of the night. When the crew came back at sunrise to retrieve them and the stuff, they hastily filmed an outro for their show, packed up their bags, and Pidge fled for the safety of the truck as soon as she could, talking Hunk’s ear off about what had happened. Keith locked up the house with the key the owner had given them, walked down the creaky wooden steps, and paused at the sidewalk to look up at the big, old house. It didn’t look so bad in the rosy glow of dawn. Like any other old house, in fact. Not at all like it was the home of a ghost.

Keith walked down the sidewalk to join his friends at the truck, and silently wondered if the owner would let him back into the basement sometime with a case of beers. 

**Author's Note:**

> I know "Pidge and Keith believe in cryptids/aliens/paranormal" is a popular headcanon, but Keith doesn't strike me as much of a believer in the supernatural. Seems a lot more down-to-earth than that. And canon Keith's pinboard had lots of carefully gathered evidence on it; Pidge is the one who went full Georgio Tsuokalos "ALIENS", lol.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please let me know if you enjoyed it, I love to hear from people (^.^) I also have a [tumblr](bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies25.tumblr.com) if you'd like to follow me there. Sorry this one didn't end up NSFW, but the next one will be! I hope I can post the first chapter before Halloween


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